My name doesn’t matter. What matters is what happened, because it happens to many of us. I grew up in a small village, thinking I’d marry young, have kids, and farm the land like my mother and her mother before her. It was the only life I knew then.

Then came the drought. The crops withered. The animals died. My family struggled. My father, desperate, decided I should marry a man from the city. He was older, had a good job, and could provide. I didn’t want to, but I knew it was for the good of my family. It felt like a heavy stone in my stomach.

City life was overwhelming. So many people, so much noise, so much I didn’t understand. My husband was kind enough, but we just didn’t connect. He worked long hours, and I stayed home, cleaning and cooking. I felt lost and useless. I missed my family, the familiar smells of the farm, the comforting rhythm of village life.

One day, I stumbled upon a small tailoring shop near the market. The owner, a woman named Fatima, was teaching young girls how to sew. I watched them, fascinated. I remembered my grandmother teaching me to mend clothes back in the village. An idea sparked in my mind.

I asked Fatima if I could learn. She smiled and said, ‘Of course, my dear. There’s always room for one more.’ It wasn’t easy. My fingers were clumsy at first. I made mistakes. But Fatima was patient, and the girls were encouraging. Slowly, I started to learn. I learned to cut fabric, to sew straight lines, to create beautiful patterns.

Sewing gave me something to focus on, something to be proud of. I started making clothes for my neighbors, then for people in the market. My small earnings helped my family back in the village. I felt useful again, like I was contributing. It wasn’t the life I imagined, but it was my life, and I was building it with my own hands.

My husband saw how happy I was. He started bringing me fabric scraps from his work. He even helped me set up a small sewing corner in our house. We started talking more, sharing our days. He began to appreciate my effort and skill.

It wasn’t a fairy tale ending, but it was real. I wasn’t the farmer I thought I’d be, but I was a tailor, a provider, a woman who found her own path when life took an unexpected turn. And that, I realized, was enough. Sometimes, it’s about finding the strength to embrace the changes that  life throws at you and creating something new from the pieces.

Life rarely goes as planned. It’s okay to find your own way, even if it’s different from what you expected. Don’t be afraid to try new things and discover hidden talents. Support other women, we are stronger together. And never underestimate the power and authority that God instilled in you.

The post From the Village to the City – An Arranged Marriage. appeared first on Sheevolves.world.

The Pain of Miscarrying the seed you looked forward to seeing
Miscarriage, you are a thief
Miscarriage, you are cruel
Miscarriage, you are a restless wanderer, searching for the warriors of this earth whom you can attack.
I am talking about our mothers, our women, our birthers
Miscarriage, you never consider, but do as you please
I am enough of you.

It is our young mothers who have a choice to terminate if they want to.
It is our young child carriers who decide if they will keep or destroy the innocent seed, but little do they know the pain of losing,
Only if they knew how it feels when you, I mean, you Miscarriage when you arrive and destroy.
The tears, the pain, the sorrow, the fights.
Miscarriage, you are cruel.
Miscarriage, you are a restless wanderer, searching for the warriors of this earth whom you can attack.

Blessed is the womb.
Blessed is the woman.
Blessed is the process of giving birth.
I am talking about our mothers, our women, our birthers
Miscarriage, you never consider, but do as you please
I am enough of you.

Miscarriage, please take a step back.
Let go and let nature take its course
Let loose and allow people to multiply in numbers
Let go and stop the pain and tears dripping from our sisters and mothers of this country.
Let you be and allow joy and fresh souls around.
The Pain of Miscarrying the seed you looked forward to seeing
Miscarriage, you are a thief
Miscarriage, you are cruel
Miscarriage, you are a restless wanderer, searching for the warriors of this earth whom you can attack.

May the spirit of Miscarriage fade off!!!

By: Nonny Vee

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Imagine this… a wide, clear blue African sky above you with the horizon that disappears behind the green hills and mountains, in a village filled with old, interesting stories passed down through generations. This is where I come from. My roots are fixed deep in the red most fertile soil that helped me grow. There, time moved with the wind and the Sun, not the clock. Our elders talked in wise sayings and idioms, teaching us about life from their perspective… the only one they knew. Respect runs within our blood, it’s part of who we are. And at night, the stars shine so bright, that they feel close enough to touch. For 18 years my village was my world.

For years, I introduced myself with an apology. I thought my worth was tied to my struggles… the poverty that shadowed my childhood, the doubts that whispered I would never be more than where I came from. I wore my hardships like a name tag as if they were the only thing worth saying about me.

But life has a way of teaching you lessons when you least expect it. I remember one evening, as I sat by the fire with my mother, she told me an old Venda folktale about a baobab tree. “The baobab”, she said “stands tall not because it encounters no storms, but because its roots go deep. The wind may bend it, but it never breaks”  She looked at me, her eyes full of quiet knowing. “You, my child, are like that tree”

Something shifted inside me that night. I began to see my life differently. Yes, I came from a village where opportunities were scarce, where dreams often withered before they could bloom. But I also came from a place of immense beauty, where kindness and respect were a currency, where laughter was medicine, and where the land itself seemed to whisper, You belong here.

As a gentle reminder to myself, I started writing my thoughts, feelings, affirmations, and experiences in a journal… not to escape my story, or silence my voice, but to claim it. At first, my words were shaky and uncertain. But with every page, I grew stronger and became better and better. I wrote about the scent of rain on dry soil, the way my mother sang while cooking early in the morning, and the stubborn hope that clung to my bones even on the hardest days. Slowly, I realized that my voice mattered. Not despite my past, but because of it.

There was a moment… one I’ll never forget when I stood at a crossroads (before I knew what the word crossroads even meant). An opportunity came – an acceptance letter to study in the coastal city approximately 1600 km away from home, far from everything I ever knew. Fear and doubt nearly paralyzed me. What if I fail? What if they see a village girl and nothing more? And what if I am not good enough for that new world? But then I heard my mother’s voice: “The baobab does not fear the wind. It holds on to the hope of a better future.”

So, there I was, 19 years young, bravely journeying to the Southern coastal city by myself. I embarked on a journey that has forever changed my life. One that has made me a better person today. It wasn’t easy. There were days I felt like an outsider, days I questioned whether I deserved to be there over and over again. But I carried my roots with me… in my heart, in my words, in the quiet strength my family had planted in me. And that made all the difference. Today, when I speak, when I write, I do it for the little girl I once was – the one who thought her circumstances defined her. I do it for anyone who has ever felt too small, too unseen, too bound by where they come from.

Because here’s the truth… Your roots are your power. The struggles, the joys, the love, the losses, they don’t limit who you are. They prepare you. They give you a story no one else can tell. So let me reintroduce myself, not as someone who overcame her past, but as someone who honors it.

I am a Survivor, a Fighter. I am the voice of a village that taught me true strength. I am the dreams my ancestors whispered into the hollering wind. I am the product of my mother’s fasting prayers. I am proof that where you start does not decide where you finish. And if a girl from the poorest South African village outskirts can rise, so can you. Because the world isn’t waiting for you to be perfect. It’s waiting for you to be “brave”. It is time to reintroduce yourself.

Written By Mutshidzi Kwinda
Born and raised: in South Africa ����, Limpopo, Venda Tribe, Ubva Ha-Makhuvha

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“Words unsaid, scenes unfold, secrets untold, in his eyes we behold”.

Partner in crime, you made me.
What a beautiful way to frame it.
With me on the cover page,
In a newspaper? In this time and age?

What use is information written on paper?
Till you went on and made it public!

Now the streets know my name,
I’m on everyone’s lips,
How could a newspaper spread feed go more viral than an Instagram post?

Been caught in an act that you directed,
Only so I can take the fall, pay for the crime,
While you taught the glory of having found me!

One day, your cup shall run over, just like mine did.
Spilling over with the same content you filled mine with.

A parasite’s delicacy, red and beaming, carrying strands of innocence in the
bloodstreams, the very thing you feed on.

I won’t be available then to put on display.
Because you already have me caged in an undersized frame.
You’d make a good model for advertising the precise meaning of

CONDESCENSION.

By: Jessica Nsude

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Mama feared the river for what it took; I loved it for what it carried away.

The river knows my name. It has whispered it since I was a child, its voice curling through the reeds, dancing over the rocks, and sinking into the depths where secrets sleep. The current has seen me grow, mirrored my tears, and carried away the echoes of my mother’s sighs.

Mama never liked the river. She said it swallowed dreams. She said it reminded her of things she wanted to forget. But I loved it—how it moved, refused to be trapped, and could be gentle and fierce all at once. I wanted to be like that. But I was never the river.

I was the stillness before the storm, the quiet weight of unshed tears, the emptiness left by things unspoken. I carried Mama’s scars like a birthright and felt Papa’s absence like a ghost at my shoulder. I spent years trying to understand what it meant to be whole when parts of you were missing when memories of love came wrapped in sorrow.

Tonight, the river reflects the setting sun, a golden wound stretched across its surface. The wind is thick with the scent of rain. I stand at the edge, toes sinking into the damp earth, and listen. There are whispers in the water—whispers of the past. I close my eyes and let them come.

The first time I heard Mama cry, I was seven. It was deep in the night, and the house was wrapped in darkness, the kind that seeped into your bones, heavy and full of secrets. I had woken up to the sound of the wind rattling our tin roof, but it wasn’t the storm outside that unsettled me—it was the storm inside.

Her sobs were as if she was trying to hold them back, trying to swallow them whole. But pain has a way of finding cracks to slip through. I crept to her door, my tiny fingers grazing the wood, unsure whether to knock or turn back. “Go back to bed, child.” Her voice was hoarse, thick with the weight of things she never said. I obeyed, but sleep never found me again that night.

Years later, I would come to understand what those tears meant. I would see the faded bruises on her skin, which she tried to hide beneath long sleeves and quiet smiles. I would piece together the truth in hushed conversations between the women in the village, their voices laced with pity and anger. “That man was never good for her.” ,”He left her broken before he left for good.” Absent Papa. The man whose name I carried but whose presence I never felt. A ghost who lived in the spaces between my mother’s sorrow and my longing.

I used to imagine him as a hero, a traveler who had been called on some grand adventure, someone who would return one day, eyes full of stories and arms ready to hold me. But as I grew older, the illusion faded, replaced by the reality of his absence. And Mama never spoke of him, not directly—just warnings wrapped in bitter wisdom.

“Don’t go looking for ghosts, my child. You’ll only find emptiness.” But some ghosts never needed to be found. They lived inside you, shaping the way you loved, the way you feared, the way you learned to endure. The river was the only place I could breathe. When the weight of the house became too much, when Mama’s silence pressed too heavy on my chest, I would come here. I would sit on the rocks, legs dangling over the water, and let the wind tangle its fingers in my hair.

The river did not ask me to be strong. It did not demand explanations. It simply existed, moving forward, always forward. I envied that. I wanted to move forward, too, to leave behind the scars I had inherited, the unanswered questions, and the ache of never quite belonging to anyone. But moving on is never as easy as the river makes it seem. Because scars do not fade as you wish them to.

The first time I ran away, I was thirteen. It wasn’t a planned escape—just a sudden, desperate need to disappear. Mama had been distant that week, her face drawn tight, her eyes clouded with something I couldn’t name. I had tried to help, to ease the burden, but my efforts were met with a tired sigh and a weary glance. “You’re just a child,” she had whispered. But I wasn’t. Not really. Not any more. So I left.

I followed the river, tracing its winding path into the unknown. The forest swallowed me, its shadows stretching long in the fading light. I walked until my legs ached, until the trees blurred together, and I could no longer hear the voices of the village. It was the first time I truly felt alone.

The darkness was different here—not the familiar, suffocating kind of home, but something wilder, something ancient. The wind carried whispers, the rustling leaves forming words I could not understand. I sat beneath a tree, wrapping my arms around my knees, and listened. Somewhere in the distance, an owl called. The river murmured secrets I was not yet ready to hear. And then—I cried.

I cried for the things I did not say, for the love I had not felt, for the weight of a fatherless childhood and a mother who could not let go of her pain long enough to see me. By the time the first light of dawn stretched across the sky, I had made a decision. I would not be like Mama. I would not let pain define me. I would not let loss anchor me in place. I would be the river. Moving forward, always forward. I returned home that morning barefoot and covered in dirt.

Mama was waiting at the door, her face unreadable. She did not ask where I had been and did not scold or punish me. Instead, she opened her arms. And for the first time in years, I allowed to be held. She smelled of wood smoke and rain, of something both familiar and distant. “I thought I lost you,” she whispered into my hair.

I wanted to tell her that she had lost me a long time ago, that I had been slipping away for years. But instead, I just closed my eyes and let the moment be enough. Because one day, I would leave for real. Not out of anger or sorrow, but because I had to. There was a world beyond this river, Mama’s sadness, and the echoes of an absent father. One day, I would find it. But for now, I stayed. For now, the river still knew my name. And I wasn’t ready to let it forget.

The post My Name Is Magdalyne, And This Is My Story appeared first on Sheevolves.world.